Unpublished interview or my first book in English
Once I was studying in Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.My education in KABK started as an exchange student later on I successfully changed my status to full time student. Who doesn't know Roland Barthes? Well, we got an assignment to read and write our opinion about his book "Picture as a souvenir". I was really in troubles. At that time my English was really bad and that book had to be my first book in English which I had to read from A to Z and write an essay afterwords. Honestly I was in a deep shit. And.. a miracle is happened. My friend L. T. was willing to spend some time to help me with the essay. Since I read only first 10 pages, we decide to use Barth's inspiration and produce an interview. (I aware that nowadays my English is neither perfect)
Picture as a souvenir
“Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. “
-Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
“I don’t know… I think I would photograph her as a normal person. Nothing special… Playing a violin; she could have been a very good musician.”
-Rami about Anja
Note
I took pictures for a really long time without giving much thought to why do I do it, to why do I want to make it my profession. But recently, after having read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, I was shocked to see a different angle of photography.
Before, I could have walked for hours - finding nothing interesting or photogenic, and when I finally did - it was like an aesthetic postcard.
Suddenly, Barthes started explaining a lot of things, obvious things, which I never thought about before. I realized that I photograph to remember, and not to have a picture. It’s extra memory. After reading Barthes everything changed: I see, I push the button, I have a nice moment I’d like to remember; as a part of life. The photograph itself is not important, I remember the moment that click. I don’t even print most of my negatives. I don’t collect pictures.
I realized I like to hunt, shoot and go. It’s maybe one of the habits of street photography journalists who hunt with a Canon. It gives me an opportunity to seem neutral and invisible from the others. To be there but not to change the situation because you are a photographer and have a big camera. That is how you participate.
What also struck me was that I understand that we get a true image of history from photographs rather than paintings. We can get more trustable information and start thinking of what happened to the person on the photograph, especially if the picture was taken before a war or a great disaster - I can’t not ask: what happened to him? What happened to his family?
The aspect of the story became more interesting to me than the good looks.
From a conversation regarding Photography as a Souvenir
R.K.: The moment is gone. Or you got it (took a photograph of it) or not.
Q: Then, are you living the taking of the moment ?
1.
I started taking pictures when I was 14, in the summer of 1987, because my neighbor Rodion, who was more or less my age, had a camera. I was really attracted to do the same, to do something interesting, to be more close to him.
He was really good in math. You always could come and ask questions. He was the best in the class. And he was a Jew. When I moved from Baku in ’88, he almost stopped photographing. Maybe because I pushed him to photograph more. Maybe it was the company - we spent nights developing pictures. It became less interesting afterwards. You don’t exchange information.
He wore glasses, we even went to canoe trips, and we had a double canoe, just so to go together. Rodion was always the shortest in the class, very wide and strong, he went to full contact and broke his nose (laughter), very narrow nose - like his father’s. I don’t remember his eyes (he brings a photograph in the answer to the question).
I have these pictures not to look at them but to be able to show them to another friend- to show him how was the wedding of our friends in Israel (we look through the album). My friend was living in the Netherlands at the time and I wanted to connect him with the important event. It was the four of us, you see, and it was the second wedding.
My pictures of the wedding were my gift to my friend (the one who got married). Now he is a computer person, Rodion. He is very, very smart but in real life he’s strange. It’s difficult to talk with him. He’s always right and always talking very loud. And he lives in Israel.
2.
First I used a SLR. Single Lens Reflex Zenit -E. It permitted me to do most of the basic things except the fast pictures because I had to calculate light by myself and focus manually. It took me about 15, 20 seconds to prepare, which is a lot for street photography. But I could learn basic photography, about light measures, and how to work with a non-zoom lens.
I switched to a new camera because I wanted to photograph faster. Just to adjust focus and the rest was done by the camera. This reflected in the photographs that I took in major quality, and more snapshots. No, no…This was not how it happened….
The truth is that my old camera broke… and while I was in a dormitory school, sitting and looking through a window, a guy passed by on a really loud motorcycle, and… lost a wallet. Thus I found the money and bought a new camera. I felt a bit guilty about it. I could have found this person but I understood that it was exactly for me and not for him. I used that camera the next 5-6 years. Without any problems.
At that time, composition had to be perfect. Everything exactly in the perfect place. I wanted to show it perfect, to think, to look for something perfect, maybe I tried to create my own perfect from non-perfect. Then there was light. Without light it’s impossible to photograph. I like soft light. It means not to photograph between 12 and 17, when the contrast between light and shadow is high. And probably it’s a kind of habit because I started off in Israel, light is very contrasted there. I made this choice because you don’t get black and white. I like to see everything. Also, when you photograph in that time of day, you capture the colors at their most real.
3.
I don’t remember what did I photograph at that time; family, excursion trips, army, I was in the army then, girlfriends. Then I thought I should photograph different things. A friend of mine, Zahar, a photojournalist, brought me along and I started being pushier, pointing the camera in your face and stuff like that. When you do it everyday it’s OK but when you stop for a week or two it’s difficult, you don’t feel very comfortable, you know it’s not very nice. It’s too close. But somehow I always had in mind Capa’s sentence: “ If a picture is not interesting, it means you are not close enough”. And I think he meant real distance in meters, but when you are that close, you should close your mind and heart and just do your job because otherwise it’s impossible. I steal their image for my own goals. I can sell it. Maybe that’s why I stopped doing that. I don’t come too close to people anymore. But at the same time if you are not close you loose contact and it’s a problem. If you are not close enough, the person can’t talk from the picture, and that shows later on, if you look at it. It’s a matter of establishing a contact with the viewer.
One of the most interesting things was to go with Zahar to Hebron. The population is mixed in Hebron, so we photographed a street fight between Arabs and the Israeli soldiers. It was dangerous but I felt… (pauses)… How did I feel?…(shrugs) God save America. This is a marble that the Arab children threw at us (he’s showing it); I keep it in my photo-bag to remember. For me it was very important… to know myself better, to know that in critical situations I am not able to photograph well.
I have a marble to remember and not a picture to remember because the marble could have killed me.
Q: But it was the fact that you were there taking pictures - that was to kill you, not the marbles?
I have those pictures but they are not so important for me.
Q: Why are you carrying a marble and not a picture (if you’re photographing for saving the moments, for remembering them)?
Can I answer this later?
Q: What is the difference between objects as a souvenir and pictures as a souvenir?
Maybe, when I photograph, I make a click in my memory, I have a picture in my brain, I remember that pictures from Hebron without having seen them for years, but the marble gives extra memories and information of that place.
Q: But how can a marble give extra information about Hebron, on top of the photograph? Does it give different kind of information? Is it information? What is a souvenir?
For me yes. The object becomes mine when I photograph it.
Q: Why didn’t you take a photograph of a marble?
It’s not photogenic. If I photograph that object it goes from real to unreal which you can’t touch, you can’t feel. (They also threw Molotov cocktails and I was stupid to wear sandals.) Tangible is an object that we keep and connect with some memories in our brain. It’s a kind of key, which suits the lock of a specific drawer in the brain. Sometimes when you open it, you find the unexpected. For the person who is doing the opening it’s real but for someone else it’s just an object. Personal objects of other people don’t touch me at all. Information is endless string of different facts, movements, words, everything what happened around us. We don’t have to open our eyes to receive it. Through our ears we get audio information, for example, we can recognize whose voice is talking or what kind of weather it is outside. Memory is processed information which because some of the reasons we decide to keep in our mind. Or it keeps by itself.
4.
We can keep a memory of a person through a photograph but I think If you don’t have an emotional connection to that specific person, with the time it will become just a picture.
I was able to relate to the work of Nan Golding. She started to photograph because the memory of her older sister who had committed suicide began to fade. For her, photographs have become “voice that would not be censored, silenced, or lost, that would not disappear”. When I first saw her pictures I didn’t like them at all. They seemed too simple. Four, five years later I changed my opinion and their simplicity and honest way of talking about life, life without decoration, became very attractive for me.
Also, the work of Chantal Spreard hit the note. I saw the series “My Father” last year at Naarden Photofestival. After a few hours I got overdosed and all previous information became one big mess, but I still remember her work. She photographed her father during the four years when he was sick with cancer. It was second experience with disease in her life. She knew about the possible consequences and started to photograph him in a very personal way: “ I wanted to make sure that I could keep my father always with me”. I could feel the warmth of their relation and her sorrow while her father was dying.
Probably, this is due to my personal experience with my younger sister whose death was completely unexpected. I always wanted to photograph her, but usually, she refused. I thought that years later we could look at them with kind of feeling thank ’s God it’s over. The weekend before she was hospitalized for the last time we went to kibbutz to visit our friends. It was a happy day and I photographed a lot. Two weeks later she died and when I wanted to develop the film, I realized that I didn’t properly load the camera…
Then there was a similar situation with my Aunt. Different because we knew that her death was only a question of time. And again I tried to photograph, but it was much more difficult because both of us knew that these pictures were supposed to be a memento of her after her death.
I like M. Ellen - Mark because her way of photographing is different than others. When she was doing her project with the mentally disabled, she didn’t just come and go but decided to stay there for few weeks, to be one of them, to feel exactly what they feel. And photographed it. I don’t remember her pictures though.
I remember Cartier Bresson. Maybe I remember him because I also was a street photographer. And some of the moments that he caught were amazing. Sometimes it looks like built composition, too perfect. Visually it’s very beautiful but nothing behind. I suppose this depends both on the picture and on the spectator. Maybe because I never lived in Paris, probably they mean more for a person who knows Paris.
Closing Note
If I look back, I see that it plays different roles in my life, photography. In the beginning it was just an attractive hobby. I was learning a lot about chemical processes, composition etc. - basic photography.
Later on, photography became a tool by which I could express myself. I remember my first project where I was able to show my feelings. I did it in a quite short time, two or three weeks, and the subject was loneliness. Manipulating darkness and high contrast I photographed myself on different locations. My pictures talked to the people. I remember one of the teacher’s comments about it: “Rami, difficult life”.
Nowadays photography became an “extra” job for me. I have started to photograph at different tango parties. I don’t come to dance anymore, I come to photograph. I was really in shock to see how many people started to be interested in me and ask me same questions, what and why. Some of them became my good friends. Camera helps to make your social life more intensive.
Picture as a souvenir
“Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. “
-Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
“I don’t know… I think I would photograph her as a normal person. Nothing special… Playing a violin; she could have been a very good musician.”
-Rami about Anja
Note
I took pictures for a really long time without giving much thought to why do I do it, to why do I want to make it my profession. But recently, after having read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, I was shocked to see a different angle of photography.
Before, I could have walked for hours - finding nothing interesting or photogenic, and when I finally did - it was like an aesthetic postcard.
Suddenly, Barthes started explaining a lot of things, obvious things, which I never thought about before. I realized that I photograph to remember, and not to have a picture. It’s extra memory. After reading Barthes everything changed: I see, I push the button, I have a nice moment I’d like to remember; as a part of life. The photograph itself is not important, I remember the moment that click. I don’t even print most of my negatives. I don’t collect pictures.
I realized I like to hunt, shoot and go. It’s maybe one of the habits of street photography journalists who hunt with a Canon. It gives me an opportunity to seem neutral and invisible from the others. To be there but not to change the situation because you are a photographer and have a big camera. That is how you participate.
What also struck me was that I understand that we get a true image of history from photographs rather than paintings. We can get more trustable information and start thinking of what happened to the person on the photograph, especially if the picture was taken before a war or a great disaster - I can’t not ask: what happened to him? What happened to his family?
The aspect of the story became more interesting to me than the good looks.
From a conversation regarding Photography as a Souvenir
R.K.: The moment is gone. Or you got it (took a photograph of it) or not.
Q: Then, are you living the taking of the moment ?
1.
I started taking pictures when I was 14, in the summer of 1987, because my neighbor Rodion, who was more or less my age, had a camera. I was really attracted to do the same, to do something interesting, to be more close to him.
He was really good in math. You always could come and ask questions. He was the best in the class. And he was a Jew. When I moved from Baku in ’88, he almost stopped photographing. Maybe because I pushed him to photograph more. Maybe it was the company - we spent nights developing pictures. It became less interesting afterwards. You don’t exchange information.
He wore glasses, we even went to canoe trips, and we had a double canoe, just so to go together. Rodion was always the shortest in the class, very wide and strong, he went to full contact and broke his nose (laughter), very narrow nose - like his father’s. I don’t remember his eyes (he brings a photograph in the answer to the question).
I have these pictures not to look at them but to be able to show them to another friend- to show him how was the wedding of our friends in Israel (we look through the album). My friend was living in the Netherlands at the time and I wanted to connect him with the important event. It was the four of us, you see, and it was the second wedding.
My pictures of the wedding were my gift to my friend (the one who got married). Now he is a computer person, Rodion. He is very, very smart but in real life he’s strange. It’s difficult to talk with him. He’s always right and always talking very loud. And he lives in Israel.
2.
First I used a SLR. Single Lens Reflex Zenit -E. It permitted me to do most of the basic things except the fast pictures because I had to calculate light by myself and focus manually. It took me about 15, 20 seconds to prepare, which is a lot for street photography. But I could learn basic photography, about light measures, and how to work with a non-zoom lens.
I switched to a new camera because I wanted to photograph faster. Just to adjust focus and the rest was done by the camera. This reflected in the photographs that I took in major quality, and more snapshots. No, no…This was not how it happened….
The truth is that my old camera broke… and while I was in a dormitory school, sitting and looking through a window, a guy passed by on a really loud motorcycle, and… lost a wallet. Thus I found the money and bought a new camera. I felt a bit guilty about it. I could have found this person but I understood that it was exactly for me and not for him. I used that camera the next 5-6 years. Without any problems.
At that time, composition had to be perfect. Everything exactly in the perfect place. I wanted to show it perfect, to think, to look for something perfect, maybe I tried to create my own perfect from non-perfect. Then there was light. Without light it’s impossible to photograph. I like soft light. It means not to photograph between 12 and 17, when the contrast between light and shadow is high. And probably it’s a kind of habit because I started off in Israel, light is very contrasted there. I made this choice because you don’t get black and white. I like to see everything. Also, when you photograph in that time of day, you capture the colors at their most real.
3.
I don’t remember what did I photograph at that time; family, excursion trips, army, I was in the army then, girlfriends. Then I thought I should photograph different things. A friend of mine, Zahar, a photojournalist, brought me along and I started being pushier, pointing the camera in your face and stuff like that. When you do it everyday it’s OK but when you stop for a week or two it’s difficult, you don’t feel very comfortable, you know it’s not very nice. It’s too close. But somehow I always had in mind Capa’s sentence: “ If a picture is not interesting, it means you are not close enough”. And I think he meant real distance in meters, but when you are that close, you should close your mind and heart and just do your job because otherwise it’s impossible. I steal their image for my own goals. I can sell it. Maybe that’s why I stopped doing that. I don’t come too close to people anymore. But at the same time if you are not close you loose contact and it’s a problem. If you are not close enough, the person can’t talk from the picture, and that shows later on, if you look at it. It’s a matter of establishing a contact with the viewer.
One of the most interesting things was to go with Zahar to Hebron. The population is mixed in Hebron, so we photographed a street fight between Arabs and the Israeli soldiers. It was dangerous but I felt… (pauses)… How did I feel?…(shrugs) God save America. This is a marble that the Arab children threw at us (he’s showing it); I keep it in my photo-bag to remember. For me it was very important… to know myself better, to know that in critical situations I am not able to photograph well.
I have a marble to remember and not a picture to remember because the marble could have killed me.
Q: But it was the fact that you were there taking pictures - that was to kill you, not the marbles?
I have those pictures but they are not so important for me.
Q: Why are you carrying a marble and not a picture (if you’re photographing for saving the moments, for remembering them)?
Can I answer this later?
Q: What is the difference between objects as a souvenir and pictures as a souvenir?
Maybe, when I photograph, I make a click in my memory, I have a picture in my brain, I remember that pictures from Hebron without having seen them for years, but the marble gives extra memories and information of that place.
Q: But how can a marble give extra information about Hebron, on top of the photograph? Does it give different kind of information? Is it information? What is a souvenir?
For me yes. The object becomes mine when I photograph it.
Q: Why didn’t you take a photograph of a marble?
It’s not photogenic. If I photograph that object it goes from real to unreal which you can’t touch, you can’t feel. (They also threw Molotov cocktails and I was stupid to wear sandals.) Tangible is an object that we keep and connect with some memories in our brain. It’s a kind of key, which suits the lock of a specific drawer in the brain. Sometimes when you open it, you find the unexpected. For the person who is doing the opening it’s real but for someone else it’s just an object. Personal objects of other people don’t touch me at all. Information is endless string of different facts, movements, words, everything what happened around us. We don’t have to open our eyes to receive it. Through our ears we get audio information, for example, we can recognize whose voice is talking or what kind of weather it is outside. Memory is processed information which because some of the reasons we decide to keep in our mind. Or it keeps by itself.
4.
We can keep a memory of a person through a photograph but I think If you don’t have an emotional connection to that specific person, with the time it will become just a picture.
I was able to relate to the work of Nan Golding. She started to photograph because the memory of her older sister who had committed suicide began to fade. For her, photographs have become “voice that would not be censored, silenced, or lost, that would not disappear”. When I first saw her pictures I didn’t like them at all. They seemed too simple. Four, five years later I changed my opinion and their simplicity and honest way of talking about life, life without decoration, became very attractive for me.
Also, the work of Chantal Spreard hit the note. I saw the series “My Father” last year at Naarden Photofestival. After a few hours I got overdosed and all previous information became one big mess, but I still remember her work. She photographed her father during the four years when he was sick with cancer. It was second experience with disease in her life. She knew about the possible consequences and started to photograph him in a very personal way: “ I wanted to make sure that I could keep my father always with me”. I could feel the warmth of their relation and her sorrow while her father was dying.
Probably, this is due to my personal experience with my younger sister whose death was completely unexpected. I always wanted to photograph her, but usually, she refused. I thought that years later we could look at them with kind of feeling thank ’s God it’s over. The weekend before she was hospitalized for the last time we went to kibbutz to visit our friends. It was a happy day and I photographed a lot. Two weeks later she died and when I wanted to develop the film, I realized that I didn’t properly load the camera…
Then there was a similar situation with my Aunt. Different because we knew that her death was only a question of time. And again I tried to photograph, but it was much more difficult because both of us knew that these pictures were supposed to be a memento of her after her death.
I like M. Ellen - Mark because her way of photographing is different than others. When she was doing her project with the mentally disabled, she didn’t just come and go but decided to stay there for few weeks, to be one of them, to feel exactly what they feel. And photographed it. I don’t remember her pictures though.
I remember Cartier Bresson. Maybe I remember him because I also was a street photographer. And some of the moments that he caught were amazing. Sometimes it looks like built composition, too perfect. Visually it’s very beautiful but nothing behind. I suppose this depends both on the picture and on the spectator. Maybe because I never lived in Paris, probably they mean more for a person who knows Paris.
Closing Note
If I look back, I see that it plays different roles in my life, photography. In the beginning it was just an attractive hobby. I was learning a lot about chemical processes, composition etc. - basic photography.
Later on, photography became a tool by which I could express myself. I remember my first project where I was able to show my feelings. I did it in a quite short time, two or three weeks, and the subject was loneliness. Manipulating darkness and high contrast I photographed myself on different locations. My pictures talked to the people. I remember one of the teacher’s comments about it: “Rami, difficult life”.
Nowadays photography became an “extra” job for me. I have started to photograph at different tango parties. I don’t come to dance anymore, I come to photograph. I was really in shock to see how many people started to be interested in me and ask me same questions, what and why. Some of them became my good friends. Camera helps to make your social life more intensive.